SF: Mexico Solidarity Benefit Concert: ZONK, Genie & Valerie Orth

Join Mission District Activists for a Concert Featuring
Z.O.N.K.
The Genie
Valerie Orth
And DJ Eric Quezada spinning Salsa, Soul and Old Skool
Benefiting the Mexico Solidarity Network’s Study Abroad Scholarship
Saturday July 8 at Balazo Gallery! ALL AGES WELCOME!!!

Doors open at 7pm and the show starts at 7:30pm.
$5 - $25 sliding scale, no one turned away.
Enjoy a Vegetarian Mexican buffet dinner for $5-$10 sliding scale.

Singer-songwriter Valerie Orth kicks off the night of amor de Mexico. She is well known for her role in organizing the Bay Area Sweat Free Coalition that has won anti-sweatshop legislation victories in San Francisco and Berkeley. But Orth is also emerging as a leading presence in the SF music scene for her innovative acoustic style and passionate performances. Her strong, sultry voice and witty songs tell of a wry visionary with world-weary experience in love and struggle. (http://www.myspace.com/vlomusic)

Following Orth will be The Genie, another local favorite with an intensely loyal following for his brilliant experimental guitar techniques. Genie has even coined his own performance art musical genre, called Scratch Guitar, where he blends blues, hip hop, reggae, drum n’ bass, middle eastern rhythms, bossa nova, and jazz via slide guitar, live-sampling, beat boxing, and unconventional syncopation to create a visually stunning and soulful performance. (http://www.thegeniemusic.com)

Headlining the evening will be Z.O.N.K., who describe their unique sound as Portisehead meets Beck meets Bjork meets Gorillaz. Most fans refer to them though as trip-hop, but the most important thing to know about Z.O.N.K.’s sound is that it is infectiously danceable. Z.O.N.K. have toured with such diverse acts as Concrete Blonde, the B-52's, De La Soul, Lyrics Born, Lady Kier of Deee-Lite and The Pharcyde. (http://www.zonkaholics.com)

Filling the blank spaces between bands will be DJ Eric Quezeda who may have the best salsa, soul and old skool LP collection east of Valencia Street. Quezeda is a long-time affordable housing and social justice activist who has run for District 9 supervisor and is involved in more progressive Mission District non-profits than seems humanly possible.

The Mexico Solidarity Network (MSN) sends activists from the United States to live and work with anti-globalization and progressive social movement activists in Mexico fighting for indigenous rights, women’s rights, labor rights and social justice. MSN sees that international grassroots alliances are critical in the global struggle for democracy, sovereignty, and economic and political justice. MSN is committed to developing these grassroots alliances on both sides of the US-Mexico border, and organizing to promote dialogue and collective action for social change. See http://www.mexicosolidarity.org for more details.

This concert will raise funds to send a Mission District social justice activist and SFSU student, Amrah Salomón Johnson, on the MSN study abroad tour to Mexico from September to December, 2006. She will document the social justice movement in Mexico after the presidential election in El Tecolote (http://www.eltecolote.org) and hold report-backs in the spring at San Francisco State University on the Zapatista movement, the femicides in Chihuahua and Juarez, and the Mexican perspective on immigration to the United States. She is still accepting requests for journalism, research and lectures and can be contacted at bmoviequeen [at] hotmail.com.